Rule Would Expand Participation in Chapter 1 Activities

WASHINGTON--Education Department officials are said to be preparing
regulations that would allow children ineligible for Chapter 1 services
to participate in activities funded by the federal compensatory
education program.

A department spokesman said last week that officials of the agency
would not comment on the rule, which is undergoing internal review. But
Wendy Jo New, an education-program specialist in the Office of
Compensatory-Education Programs, previewed the proposal at a November
meeting of state Chapter 1 coordinators, according to participants in
the session.

"We'll have to wait for the regulations, but the initial reaction
was supportive," Diana Whitelaw, Connecticut's state coordinator and
the president of the coordinators' national association, said last
week.

Ms. Whitelaw and other participants in the meeting said Ms. New told
them the upcoming rule would allow "incidental" participation of
ineligible school children in a school district could demonstrate that
excluding them was "impractical."

Districts would still have to design their programs based on the
needs of eligible students and would have to ensure that services to
those children were not diminished and that no otherwise eligible child
was denied services as a result of the "incidental" participation, Ms.
New was said to have told the coordinators. She said the rule would not
specify a maximum allowable percentage of ineligible children,
according to meeting participants.

The proposal responds to widespread complaints from educators that
rules designed to ensure that Chapter 1 funds benefit the neediest
students often have unfortunate side effects.

Separate Classrooms

Most significantly, the critics say, such rules are a strong
incentive to avoid administrative difficulty by providing extra
remedial services to Chapter 1 children in separate classes--a practice
that clashes with the findings of most current education research. (See
Education Week, May 22, 1990.)

Many educators argue that "pullout" instruction stigmatizes Chapter
1 students, causes them to miss instruction in their regular classes,
and frustrates efforts to improve coordination among teachers and
congruence between programs.

The Education Department responded to a related complaint last year
by publishing a guidance manual that specifically allows schools to use
equipment purchased with Chapter 1 funds for other educational purposes
as long as such uses do not detract from the compensatory-education
program.

Coordinators who attended the November meeting said Ms. New told
them the planned new rule was intended to encourage schools to provide
remedial services in heterogeneous classes and to allow the use of
techniques such as cooperative learning, in which children of differing
achievement levels work together.

Federal officials "have had a lot of feedback from school districts,
and they've seen the research that shows you shouldn't segment kids
into small groups," Ms. Whitelaw said.

"They appear to be doing this for the right reasons," she added.
"Where is a serious potential for abuse, but I think we have to take
that risk."

In the past, civil-rights and child-advocacy groups have opposed
loosening Chapter 1 rules for fear that schools would use the federal
money as general aid, rather than for programs to help the
disadvantaged pupils who are the intended beneficiaries. Many of the
program's rules were written to curb such abuses, which were rampant in
its early years.

But representatives from such groups said last week that the change
under consideration could be beneficial if the rules were carefully
drafted.

'Whole-School Reform'

Paul Weckstein, a lawyer who represents the Coalition of Title
I/Chapter 1 Parents, said that while the group would work to protect
eligible children's access to services, "we are also interested in
things like cooperative learning."

"If an aide is walking through the classroom checking kids' work, it
might stigmatize the eligible kids if the aide works only with them,"
added Phyllis McClure, the director of education programs for the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "I don't see why the aide can't
look at the other kids' work as well." "The focus on individual kids
may have been appropriate in the past," Ms. McClure said, "But the
focus is now on using Chapter 1 as a federal lever for whole-school
reform."

Ms. New was said to have told the state coordinators that the
proposed regulations would be published along with revised rules for
the separate Chapter 1 program serving institutionalized children.

The Education Department published a Federal Register notice in
October 1990 soliciting comments on how that program could be
improved.

The agency also plans to propose changes in "maintenance of effort"
rules that prevent districts from using Chapter 1 funds to help
decrease local expenditures, Ms. New was said to have told the November
gathering.

The changes reportedly would exclude from consideration districts'
expenditures of aid received under Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, a change
that would allow the calculation to more accurately reflect local
effort and also make Chapter 1 rules consistent with those for other
programs.

Vol. 11, Issue 16, Pages 37-38

Published in Print: January 8, 1992, as Rule Would Expand Participation in Chapter 1 Activities

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